Freelance space writer Roger Guilmette has witnessed nearly 100 rocket launches since 1975. On Wednesday (April 1), he was on the ground at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, giving Live Science a live broadcast of the Artemis II moon launch. Here’s what he saw at the historic launch:
At the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) press site for the Artemis II launch, there was a palpable excitement unlike anything I’ve experienced in my years covering human spaceflight from this iconic location.
Journalists from around the world, both grizzled veterans and wide-eyed newcomers, were positively giddy as they watched astronauts return to the moon decades later.
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Bright television lights shone above news agency trailers along the “media row” as major networks assembled their A-teams to cover this landmark event. Morning and evening national news broadcasts began at KSC, with the vehicle assembly building’s giant American flag and NASA’s “meatball” logo (first unveiled in 1959) serving as a dramatic backdrop. What was old suddenly felt new again.
For older people like us, memories of the Apollo era are vague and fading. For me, the historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission in July 1969 filled the week of my 10th birthday. A few years later, in December of 1972, a friend and I “camped” in the basement of our finished home and watched on color(!) television until well after midnight as Apollo 17, the last manned moon trip for 50 years, lit up the skies over Florida’s Space Coast.
You don’t just watch a powerful rocket ascend. I feel the ground beneath me shake, its powerful staccato impact reverberating in my chest.
After several whirlwind years of the “Race to the Moon,” the closest experience I had to Artemis II was the maiden flight of Space Shuttle Columbia STS-1 in April 1981. As a senior in college, I stood just a few hundred yards from where I had seen Artemis II and watched a brand new, never-before-flew spaceplane soar into the sky toward dawn. I remember watching the Columbia jump off the launch pad with tears in my eyes and softly whispering, “Go, go!” I subconsciously found myself doing the same thing with Artemis II (now with a few more colorful adjectives).
The launch of Artemis II was so vivid that it would be impossible to witness it in person. Still images and video cannot capture the sheer brilliance and intensity of a space launch system’s ignition and launch. Seeing the glowing white and orange plume concentrated below the rocket was like looking into the sun itself, and it looked far more dazzling than any Space Shuttle launch I’ve ever witnessed. You don’t just watch a powerful rocket ascend. I feel the ground beneath me shake, its powerful staccato impact reverberating in my chest.
More than 50 years after Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmidt reluctantly departed from the spectacular rolling hills and gigantic rock formations of the Valley of the Moon known as Taurus Littrow, the United States (along with international partners) is once again taking bold steps to continue exploring the strange new worlds they abandoned generations ago.
The goal was always in front of me. On a clear winter night, it soars high into the sky, bringing light to a barren, snow-covered landscape. On cool fall nights, it hangs impossibly high on the eastern horizon, casting a warm orange glow on farmers and stargazers alike. Each witness shared a feeling of being able to reach out and be touched.
largely.
I have never lost sight of the goal. It invites us all to pause and resume our old acquaintance, our neighbor, the moon.
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